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Meredith Baxter talks about being forced out of the closet

A year ago, Meredith Baxter came out on The Today Show. And this week she sat down with The Windy City Times to talk about the whys and hows and whos of her decision to open up to Matt Lauer (and the world) about her personal life.

I went on this cruise that part of We Have To Stop Now, which you may not know about but it is a web series. We were filming on the cruise. It was a lesbian series so I thought, “I am courting this, I understand what I am doing.” I was thinking I would have to address it when I got off the cruise. I didn’t know if I should put an ad in the paper. I didn’t know what you do in a situation like this!
But she didn’t have much time to decide what to do, because as soon as she got off the ship, Perez Hilton, The Star, The Globe and The Enquirer had acquired photos of Baxter and her girlfriend. And every publication was beating down her manager’s door looking for a statement. (And by “statement” I mean they were looking for a few sentences to spin into a factually errant story, as they do.)

Baxter teared up when telling The Windy City Times that she didn’t want to deny anything, but that she just wanted to live a quiet life. Because she was afraid the tabloids would turn her story into something tawdry, her manager convinced her to go on The Today Show and scoop them. Baxter told her manager, “No, no, no – this is not right. I shouldn’t have to do this.”

“You were forced into coming out, which is not fair,” the Times reporter clarified.

“Yes,” Baxter replied. “Well life isn’t fair, but it was baptism by fire … [but] I have a freedom now that I never expected.

Baxter’s Times interview raises some interesting questions – all of which we’ve been grappling with here at AfterEllen.com for quite some time. Is it ever OK to “out” a celebrity? What does it even mean to “out” someone these days when many celebrities are obviously in relationships with a same-sex partner but have not labeled themselves as gay? Former AfterEllen.com editor-in-chief Sarah Warn examined this conundrum – the new definition of “out” – two years ago when considering Lindsay Lohan‘s relationship with Samantha Ronson.

In the olden days of, say, the 1990s, you had to say actually say the words “I’m gay” or “I’m in a romantic relationship with so-and-so” to some kind of reputable press outlet to be considered openly gay, or “out.” Otherwise, you were considered “in” (or closeted).

There are and will continue to be those who come out with words, and those who choose not to come out at all. But beginning in the early part of this decade, a new way of being out emerged that was characterized by living openly in a same-sex relationship and not denying or hiding it from the press, but refusing to actually define it with words.

When we talk about “coming out” in the gay and lesbian community, what we’re commonly referring to is the moment we acknowledge we’re gay or bisexual to the people closest to us. But for most LGBT people the process of coming out is perpetual; it doesn’t stop once we tell our parents we’re queer. When we make new acquaintances, revisit relationships with people who knew us before we were out, acquire new work colleagues, run into extended family around the holidays, we have to choose whether to “come out” over and over and over again.

Being a celebrity adds another layer to that perpetual coming out process because celebrities have to choose whether or not to make a grand public announcement to the world. Well, many of them have to choose; for some celebrities, the choice is made for them. If, say, Taylor Swift started dating a chick, we’d know about it immediately, because the paparazzi live in T-Swizzle’s grill. But in the case of someone like Meredith Baxter, whose popularity really peaked in the ’80s, she could probably have remained under the radar forever if she hadn’t been photographed on a cruise with her girlfriend. And that puts media outlets like AfterEllen.com – which is to say, media outlets with any sort of integrity – into a bit of a pickle. If a celebrity is out to all of her friends and family, and we know she’s gay, do we say she’s gay – even if she hasn’t announced it publicly? For the most part, no. Until someone explicitly tells us (or another media outlet) that she’s gay – or talks to us (or another media outlet) about her girlfriend – we figure it’s not our business to make her business the world’s business.

Now don’t get me wrong: we want celebrities to be out. Out celebrities change the landscape of the equality battle. Out celebrities are personally validating to most LGBT people. Out celebrities matter a whole lot.

The question of “outing” is part of a larger question about celebrity culture: Where’s the line between public and private? What belongs to them (the celebrities) and what belongs to us (the public)? The reality of entertainment reporting these days is that real life is real news.

Sometimes we have to make a judgment call – “women who are ‘out’ in their actions, if not in their words,” Sarah Warn used to say – but we’re never going to bully someone to come out the way Perez Hilton & Co. bullied Meredith Baxter to come out.

Life is sometimes more free on the outside; Meredith Baxter knows that now. In fact, she’s become a vocal part of the equality movement, and we’re all better for her decision to acknowledge she’s gay. But at the end of the day, every person – including celebrities – should have the right to choose which side of the closet door they want to stand on.

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